49 Facts About Gordie Howe

Gordon Gordie Howe was a Canadian professional ice hockey player.

Gordie Howe ranked among the top ten in NHL scoring for 21 consecutive years and set an NHL record for points in a season in 1953, a record which was broken six years later.

Gordie Howe won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings four times and won six Hart Trophies as the NHL's most valuable player.

Gordie Howe retired for the first time in 1971 and was immediately inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame that same year.

Gordie Howe was then inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame the next year, but came back two years later to join his sons Mark and Marty on the Houston Aeros of the WHA.

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Gordie Howe was most famous for his scoring prowess, physical strength and career longevity, and redefined the ideal qualities of a forward.

Gordie Howe is the only player to have competed in the NHL in five different decades ; he played a shift in a 1997 game for the Detroit Vipers of the IHL, playing professional hockey for a sixth decade.

Gordie Howe became the namesake of the "Gordie Howe hat trick": a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game, though he only recorded two such games in his career.

Gordie Howe was the inaugural recipient of the NHL Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

Gordie Howe was born in a farmhouse in Floral, Saskatchewan, the son of Katherine and Albert Gordie Howe.

When Gordie was nine days old, the Howes moved to Saskatoon, where his father worked as a labourer during the Depression.

Gordie Howe was mildly dyslexic growing up, but was physically beyond his years at an early age.

Gordie Howe quit school during the Depression to work in construction, then left Saskatoon at 16 to pursue his hockey career.

Gordie Howe was an ambidextrous player, one of just a few skaters able to use the straight sticks of his era to shoot either left- or right-handed.

Gordie Howe received his first taste of professional hockey at age 15 in 1943 when he was invited by the New York Rangers to their training camp held at "The Amphitheatre" in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Gordie Howe played well enough there that the Rangers wanted Howe to sign a "C" form which would have given that club his National Hockey League rights and to play that year at Notre Dame, a Catholic school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, that was known for producing good hockey players.

In 1944, Gordie Howe was noticed by Detroit Red Wings scout Fred Pinkney and was invited to their camp in Windsor, Ontario.

Gordie Howe was signed by the Red Wings to a "C" form and assigned to their junior team, the Galt Red Wings.

Gordie Howe quickly established himself as a great goalscorer and a gifted playmaker with a willingness to fight.

Gordie Howe scored 20 or more goals in 22 consecutive seasons between 1949 and 1971, an NHL record.

Gordie Howe led Detroit to four Stanley Cup championships and to first place in regular-season play for seven consecutive years, a feat never equalled in NHL history.

Gordie Howe missed the rest of the playoffs, but his dominant teammates were still able to win the Stanley Cup.

Gordie Howe won four straight scoring titles and in two of the years he led the NHL in both goals and assists, which has only been done by five other players in history .

Chicago's Stan Mikita recalled one time as a rookie when he slashed Gordie Howe saying "he was an old man who didn't belong on the ice"; later in the season Gordie Howe exacted revenge with a check that gave Mikita a concussion.

Hull and Gordie Howe would be rivals in the World Hockey Association, as members of the Winnipeg Jets and Houston Aeros, respectively, and would be reunited as teammates on the Hartford Whalers where they finished off their playing careers.

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Gordie Howe finished second or third in the voting for the Hart a further six times.

Gordie Howe was named to the NHL's First All-Star Team 12 times and to the Second All-Star Team eight times.

Gordie Howe was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1971.

One year later, Gordie Howe was offered a contract to play with the Houston Aeros of the newly formed World Hockey Association, which had signed his sons Mark and Marty to contracts.

In 1974, at age 46, Howe won the Gary L Davidson Trophy, awarded to the WHA's Most Valuable Player .

Gordie Howe played with the Aeros until 1977, when he and his sons joined the New England Whalers.

Gordie Howe was named with sons Mark and Marty to the WHA version of Team Canada for an eight-game series against the Soviet Union.

Gordie Howe played one final season, appearing in all 80 games of the schedule and helping his team to make the playoffs by scoring 41 points .

Gordie Howe had played in five decades of All-Star Games and he would skate alongside the second-youngest to ever play in an All-Star Game, 19-year-old Wayne Gretzky.

Gordie Howe followed his father by being elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011.

Gordie Howe's died in 2009 at age 76 after a long battle with Pick's disease.

Gordie Howe's cremated remains, along with those of his wife Colleen, were returned to Canada for the last time and interred in Saskatoon in September 2016, at the base of his statue outside of SaskTel Centre.

Gordie Howe is widely considered the most complete player in all of hockey history.

Once Gordie Howe began dominating the NHL, NHL scouts were given new directives to discover players that played the way he did.

Gordie Howe's strength, scoring ability, and speed exemplified the perfect example of the modern-day role of a power forward and someone who can play the 200-foot game.

Howe's brawn and physical play inspired the coining of the "Gordie Howe hat-trick"—a goal, an assist and a fight—which is a standard part of hockey's vocabulary.

Gordie Howe was known for being a well-mannered and trusting person off the ice who never questioned the salary the Detroit Red Wings owners paid him.

Gordie Howe's time playing with the WHA with his sons allowed the fledgling professional league to gain much-needed legitimacy and the ability to fill stadiums.

Gordie Howe was signed to a one-game contract by the Detroit Vipers of the International Hockey League and at age 69, made a return to the ice for one shift.

Gordie Howe is currently fourth on the NHL's all-time points list with 1850 total points after Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Jaromir Jagr.

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Gordie Howe is still second on the all-time goals list, with only Gretzky ahead of him.

Gordie Howe played internationally on one occasion, at the 1974 Summit Series.

Gordie Howe was featured in The Simpsons episode "Bart the Lover".

Gordie Howe was awarded the Order of Canada by the Governor General of Canada, Queen Elizabeth II's representative in the country.